Nimbin Valley Dairy's true-blue cheese

Travel through the spectacular green rolling hinterland of the
Northern Rivers region of NSW and you'll find dozens of old
village dairies that once played a crucial role in
Australia's booming commodity-butter trade with the mother
country.

By the turn of the 19th century most of the thick, indigenous
rainforest growing in the region had been cleared, and dairy
farmers from the southern states moved in to take advantage
of the warm climate and rich farming land. A new railway was built
linking the Tweed Valley towns in the region, and Byron Bay boasted
the largest cooperative butter factory in the southern hemisphere.
But today the small family dairy farms have almost disappeared, the
rail line is overgrown with weeds, and genuine local butter is as
rare as hen's teeth.

The good news is that Nimbin Valley Dairy is starting to change
this sad state of affairs by adding a new cultured butter to its
range of farmhouse products. Established by third-generation local
farmers Kerry and Paul Wilson, the 120-hectare farm lies on the
outskirts of Nimbin village, and has been producing fresh milk
since 2007.

"Initially we were supplying all our milk to Norco, the local
dairy cooperative, but a combination of low milk prices and drought
forced us to rethink our future," says Kerry. "We have great
rainfall, lush subtropical pastures and some of the most fertile
soils in the country, but circumstances were conspiring against
us."

They decided to change direction and start selling the farm's
goat's milk direct to the public at local farmers' markets. "It's
one of the quirks of Australian law that it's actually legal to
sell raw goat's milk, but not raw cow's milk," Paul says.

They soon realised that their local customers wanted far more
than just raw goat's milk. A unique variety of farmstead cheese
made from pasteurised goat's and cow's milk soon followed. Good
milk is the starting point for all great cheese and the dairy uses
only fresh milk from the farm's pasture-fed dairy animals. This is
left to sour naturally overnight before cultures and salt are
added. "A total presence of mind and devotion to the moment is
crucial," says Paul, "because the slightest differences in the milk
call for modifying the process every time."

The naming of Nimbin Valley Dairy cheese reflects a similar
simple, no-frills approach with "no numbers in the ingredients
list, and no words you can't pronounce", he says. The mild creamy
cow's milk blue, for instance, is called Blue Cow, while its
stronger cousin made from goat's milk is Blue Goat.

Today, Nimbin Valley Dairy cheese is found at all the local
farmers' markets and also up and down the coast from Newcastle to
Noosa. But Kerry says it's been a long and hard road. "We could've
just bought in milk and made some plastic cheese and sold to
supermarkets but that's not what we're about. We're farmers, so we
wanted our own animals and we wanted to make traditional cheeses in
a way that respected our land and the environment."

The exciting news is that this year they began building a new
farm dairy with plans to expand a production facility for cultured
butter. Paul remembers milking the cows with his grandmother as a
child. "I can still smell the dairy and the milk as it was
separated into cream and skim milk. And the sound of the rhythm
that grandma got going as she was milking the cows by hand is still
embedded in my mind." After that the cream went into the Sunbeam
Mixmaster to make butter. "She had a wooden spoon to mix water
through the butter to wash it. But it was so old there was only the
stub of the spoon left on the end of the handle - most of it had
worn away. And that butter was used for baking sponge cakes and
whatever else we wanted.

"It was also used for barter trading with neighbours for vegies
and things that we didn't have. They were the hippies of the region
before the hippies arrived in the '70s."